Is Radian an actual charge controller or not?

[Murby]

Another nice option is the Morninstar 600V Tristar charge controller and whatever battery inverter you want. You can keep your solar panels wired as is to the grid tied inverter, but go through a switch that you can manually switch between the charge controller and the inverter when needed. The down side is it doesn't automatically switch over when the grid goes down, but the nice thing is you can do nice 3 stage charging of your battery bank with 1 string of your array (up to about 3kW).

They're ridiculously expensive.. I think it was something like $2300 or more? The controller costs more than the panels do! But I do like Morningstar.. I have a tiny 12v-30amp controller on my chicken coop that keeps the battery charged for the automatic door...

[Mike90250]

They're ridiculously expensive.. I think it was something like $2300 or more? The controller costs more than the panels do! But I do like Morningstar.. I have a tiny 12v-30amp controller on my chicken coop that keeps the battery charged for the automatic door...

Nobody said solar power was free !
For backup battery charging, you have a choice of a 600V controller you just flip a switch to start it running, or a standard 150V controller and you re-wire your 500V string of panels to feed the cheaper controller, and then switch the wires back around when Grid is restored.

[Murby]

Nobody said solar power was free !
For backup battery charging, you have a choice of a 600V controller you just flip a switch to start it running, or a standard 150V controller and you re-wire your 500V string of panels to feed the cheaper controller, and then switch the wires back around when Grid is restored.

I think I'll probably just rewire the panels to 150volts.. I have a natural gas generator.. if the natural gas runs out, the grid certainly isn't coming back anytime soon... and even if the time frame is only measured in months instead of years, the setup with the Flexmax controllers and Radian will still be able to send the power back to the grid.

So now all I need to do is to order the Radian and the Flexmax controllers, and make sure I have enough pv wire and MC4 connectors on hand as well as a hoffman box or two to make combiner panels.

Man, you guys in this forum have been a huge help with this stuff.. It would have taken me months to figure all this stuff out without this forum.. Just the battery sub-form alone is worth its weight in gold...

[Amy@altE]

They're ridiculously expensive.. I think it was something like $2300 or more? The controller costs more than the panels do!

You are looking at the one with all of the bells and whistles. The model I was referring to just has the 600V charge controller and the DC switch to switch between inverter and charge controller. That one is $1600. Still not cheap, but worth it to some who can't rewire their array. Remember, if you rewire the panels to 150V, your current is going to go way up, so you will likely have to rewire the whole system with bigger wire.

[Murby]

You are looking at the one with all of the bells and whistles. The model I was referring to just has the 600V charge controller and the DC switch to switch between inverter and charge controller. That one is $1600. Still not cheap, but worth it to some who can't rewire their array. Remember, if you rewire the panels to 150V, your current is going to go way up, so you will likely have to rewire the whole system with bigger wire.

For $1600 I can purchase two of the Flexmax 80's and have money left over for batteries! Just doesn't seem worth it.

Good point about needing bigger wire. My array is currently using 10ga wire so that's plenty for the series strings between panels.. I'll have to increase that to something like 6 ga in the parallel connections.. or just run all the series strings into a combiner panel onto a buss bar...